There were more than 300 protests in the US today marking the aniversery of the US attack on Iraq. Protests also happened all around the world. What happened in your city? Did you protest? Feel free to post pictures for us also.

There were lots of people carying signs in Olympia. 2hr south of Seattle about 300- 500 people showed up for a gathering at the capitol and then march to a park. Luckily there was no violance and it was a really wonderful thing to be at. There was a mix of some college students, but it mostly consisted of community members.

I wasn't even aware of it until I read this thread, so I guess there wasn't much activity in upstate New York (Albany area), but you think 300-500 people is news worthy? come and tell me when there are 300,000 then I will take notice.
I also see no point in protests.

Protests have a point. To draw a parallel...who knows how much longer Vietnam would have gone if we hadn't had those massive, constant protests in the '60s? That visible, continuous public anger forced Nixon to end the war.

If it were not for protests how would we know what others are thinking?

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Maybe you spend your time actually doing something than JUST holding a sign and marching. Prostesting wastes time and money. Especialy the police's time. Every single protest I have ever seen has atleast a few cops keeping it under control. Why waste their time? Most petitions I have seen on TV and friend's pictures they are all dirty hippies that fight and give police trouble. Why is any goverment or person going to listen to a bunch of delinquent dirty hippies (redundant)? The only petitions that work are the kind kids at my school organize: peaceful, well dressed, no screaming, no megaphones, no civil disobedience and no burning flags. No one in a power position looks kindly upon a mob of hippies burning flags, yelling and giving the police trouble. Personaly if I was in a place of power and a bunch of well dressed people not yelling ect. were petetioning I would respond to them over an angry mob. I would just call the police on the mob. The reason why strikes work and other forms of non-violent protest work is becasue other people can relate to their cause. And you can't launch tear gas at a bunch of peaceful workers, or students. And what does the media show on the news about the large anti-bush protests? Just funny clips of the protesters getting their asses kicked by tear gas and police. Wow, thats not going to get me join their cause.

Letters, writing, contacting the media, and polite petition are another ways (better ways) to get your opinion out there.

Maybe you spend your time actually doing something than JUST holding a sign and marching. Prostesting wastes time and money. Especialy the police's time. Every single protest I have ever seen has atleast a few cops keeping it under control. Why waste their time? Most petitions I have seen on TV and friend's pictures they are all dirty hippies that fight and give police trouble. Why is any goverment or person going to listen to a bunch of delinquent dirty hippies (redundant)? The only petitions that work are the kind kids at my school organize: peaceful, well dressed, no screaming, no megaphones, no civil disobedience and no burning flags. No one in a power position looks kindly upon a mob of hippies burning flags, yelling and giving the police trouble. Personaly if I was in a place of power and a bunch of well dressed people not yelling ect. were petetioning I would respond to them over an angry mob. I would just call the police on the mob. The reason why strikes work and other forms of non-violent protest work is becasue other people can relate to their cause. And you can't launch tear gas at a bunch of peaceful workers, or students. And what does the media show on the news about the large anti-bush protests? Just funny clips of the protesters getting their asses kicked by tear gas and police. Wow, thats not going to get me join their cause.

Letters, writing, contacting the media, and polite petition are another ways (better ways) to get your opinion out there.

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I *strongly* disagree! There is a reason why we have the right to peaceful assembly! It is of utmost importance that peple protest publically!

Maybe you spend your time actually doing something than JUST holding a sign and marching. Prostesting wastes time and money. Especialy the police's time. Every single protest I have ever seen has atleast a few cops keeping it under control. Why waste their time? Most petitions I have seen on TV and friend's pictures they are all dirty hippies that fight and give police trouble. Why is any goverment or person going to listen to a bunch of delinquent dirty hippies (redundant)? The only petitions that work are the kind kids at my school organize: peaceful, well dressed, no screaming, no megaphones, no civil disobedience and no burning flags. No one in a power position looks kindly upon a mob of hippies burning flags, yelling and giving the police trouble. Personaly if I was in a place of power and a bunch of well dressed people not yelling ect. were petetioning I would respond to them over an angry mob. I would just call the police on the mob. The reason why strikes work and other forms of non-violent protest work is becasue other people can relate to their cause. And you can't launch tear gas at a bunch of peaceful workers, or students. And what does the media show on the news about the large anti-bush protests? Just funny clips of the protesters getting their asses kicked by tear gas and police. Wow, thats not going to get me join their cause.

Letters, writing, contacting the media, and polite petition are another ways (better ways) to get your opinion out there.

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So go live in a police state and trust the commercial media to make your voice heard... sucker.

"Whose streets?"
"Our streets!"

They are our streets and the right of assembly is built in the constitution for a reason.
The only violence I saw at last years protests was the police running thir horses into us standing on the sidewalk.

and I am far from a "delinquent dirty hipp"y very far from it, except for the dirty and delinquent part. Who do you think goes to these protests? It's workers and students and mothers and fathers that care about our country. Not some cynical high school apologist, brain dead from too much Rush Limbaugh.

Maybe you spend your time actually doing something than JUST holding a sign and marching. Prostesting wastes time and money. Especialy the police's time. Every single protest I have ever seen has atleast a few cops keeping it under control. Why waste their time? Most petitions I have seen on TV and friend's pictures they are all dirty hippies that fight and give police trouble. Why is any goverment or person going to listen to a bunch of delinquent dirty hippies (redundant)? The only petitions that work are the kind kids at my school organize: peaceful, well dressed, no screaming, no megaphones, no civil disobedience and no burning flags. No one in a power position looks kindly upon a mob of hippies burning flags, yelling and giving the police trouble. Personaly if I was in a place of power and a bunch of well dressed people not yelling ect. were petetioning I would respond to them over an angry mob. I would just call the police on the mob. The reason why strikes work and other forms of non-violent protest work is becasue other people can relate to their cause. And you can't launch tear gas at a bunch of peaceful workers, or students. And what does the media show on the news about the large anti-bush protests? Just funny clips of the protesters getting their asses kicked by tear gas and police. Wow, thats not going to get me join their cause.

Letters, writing, contacting the media, and polite petition are another ways (better ways) to get your opinion out there.

Click to expand...

With the greatest respect, you are living in a fantasy world. You obviously don't have the faintest idea about the sort of people who have been publicly protesting around the world over the Iraq issue for the last year and a half.

The vast majority (read 98% plus) in my experience are ordinary, decent citizens, deeply disturbed by the foreign policy of your government. Your image of "delinquent dirty hippies - getting their asses kicked by tear gas and police" is so wrong that I struggle to guess where you gather your information but, whatever your sources, I suggest you extend them.

I wasn't even aware of it until I read this thread, so I guess there wasn't much activity in upstate New York (Albany area), but you think 300-500 people is news worthy? come and tell me when there are 300,000 then I will take notice.
I also see no point in protests.

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Actually I was wrong it was 1,000 acording to the local paper, though knowing how accurate papers are in reporting these events it was probalby more. Anyway this thread was not about my protest, it was about all the protests that happened around the world drawing people from all over. Though many of you share concerns that people in the no war movment shared. They said on national public radio that people in the protests felt the lack of turn out was becuase it was clear that this administration would not listen. I think in protesting it is important because it shows people in other countries, that in our case, Americans, do not believe in what our governemnt is doing. The world would even have a harder view on America today if this did not happen, they would all think that we ALL support bush and the administration.

Reaching down to my bowels to remove my foot......
I switched on the news when I got done here on MF, did i feel small.....

I do want to retract (slightly) my comment on protesting

the right to express feelings and beliefs shall be allowed in any form (to within whatever reason the courts allow) so however frivolous the protest it does express the beliefs of those participating.

I think want i meant to say before blurting out, is that I see no point in "MY" protesting because to me I feel it gets you nowhere.

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Glad to show you the light I dont' personally protest on the street because I'm agoraphobic and the crowds would do me in. But I absolutely am thrilled to see other protesting and give them my full support!

There was probably a protest in Austin at the capitol, and probably on campus, but it's just the usual drag-rats, hippies, and the such. Their protests just serve to clog the infrastructure of Austin, and they usually don't even have a permit to block streets to protest. Stupid if you ask me. Any organization that does that should have to pay the city for blocking off the road, and for police protection and services. If they don't pay, they shouldn't be allowed to protest in the streets! Clog the sidewalks for all I care...

Protests are fine, as long as they are peaceful protests, but when they are not, that's when they need to be stopped. There was this whole deal in Austin about police investigating protesters, because these guys planned to turn violent, and vandalize and destroy property. They got all up in arms because the police were on to them, but the protests they were planning weren't exactly peaceful.

People have the freedom of speech, not the freedom to destroy others' property. (and block roads without the city's permission.)

There was probably a protest in Austin at the capitol, and probably on campus, but it's just the usual drag-rats, hippies, and the such. [...]
People have the freedom of speech, not the freedom to destroy others' property. (and block roads without the city's permission.)

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it's called civil disobedience.

i think you should go to one sometime, not to make a statement, but just to observe. i think you might be surprised what kind of people show up.

i think you should go to one sometime, not to make a statement, but just to observe. i think you might be surprised what kind of people show up.

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Actually, I just got back from a free speech rally on campus, protesting actions my University is planning to take based on a "diversity report". They want to make all students sign an honor code (removing 1st amendment rights), make students take a mandatory diversity class (in the hopes that it'll make the entire campus culturally sensitive towards each other), keep students from joining greek organizations until their sophomore year, and remove statues on campus of people who had something to do with the confederate army during the civil war, among other things. There are 84 provisions, I think...

So our rally is going on nicely, and we have a microphone for the opposition to come up and speak, and we got some intelligent, open minded discussion. This rally was not supposed to be "Republicans dissing diversity", it was student's for free speech. Well, some smart-a$$ decides to come up, and call everyone supporting the rally racist, because the majority of them are conservative. Frankly, us conservatives wanted people from all political parties to see that the university is trying to take away our rights, and several people were quite open minded about it, but this one guy seemed to think that just because we were conservatives, we were wrong, racist, culturally insensitive, and had no real way to deal with anything. Somehow, this intelligent discussion/debate turned into this one guy's triage against the Bush administration. The question he was asked was something on the lines of "what do you propose to do about racism on campus?" Bits and pieces of his response consisted of "87 billion", "neo-conservative racists", "weapons of mass destruction" and the usual liberal/radical ammunition.

This person finally left because he was "offended" by our rally. Apparently, he was too closed minded to realize that we were merely advocating student rights, pointing out that this diversity task force is merely a solution searching for a problem.

So our rally is going on successfully, there is open minded discussion and debate, with all types of people speaking their opposition on the university's plans. We were not campaigning for Bush, or slamming liberal ideology, yet we were attacked by these liberals/radicals who don't like anything that has to remotely do with conservatives at all. The types of people on their side were also not exactly what you would call our nation's "leaders". These were the "starving artist", "anti-government", "Everything is a conspiracy" type of people who merely wanted to voice their discontent for Bush, and not discuss anything about the issue on hand.

There was no violence or "civil disobedience", but some of these guys got pretty emotional about things. They would've liked to see nothing more than us being taken down by a horde of their protesting liberal friends. They stayed relatively peaceful, but you could tell that these guys would cause disobedience if there wasn't a crowd, or police nearby.

While some of the people who argued against us had a good argument, and were willing to talk about the issues on hand, there were still those who would rather vandalize, smash windshields, and run amok trying to get their point across. They need to learn from the guy who firebombed the SUV's that that's no way to get your message across, but their closed mindedness is apparently inhibiting them from seeing that.

So basically, a small group of liberals tried to hijack our rally for their own cause, at the expense of our time, planning, and resources. While they didn't get very far, it just goes to show the extreme's they'll go to, to be heard. Other than these few people, we had a good crowd, but this was a free speech rally, not an anti war protest (never-mind the war is already over.)

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